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Aristotelian and Cartesian Revolutions in the Philosophy of Man and Woman

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Prudence Allen
Prudence Allen
Affiliation:
Concordia University
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Extract

Today a “new” field of philosophy has emerged which can be called simply “The Philosophy of Man and Woman”. Paradoxically, it is a field of study with a long and impressive history which began when the pre-Socratic philosophers first questioned their own identity in the midst of the world. Their questions fall into four broad areas:

1. How is the male “opposite” to the female?

2. What roles do male and female play in the generation and identity of offspring?

3. Are women and men wise in the same or different ways?

4. Are women and men good in the same or different ways?

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , Summer 1987 , pp. 263 - 270
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1987

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References

1 A detailed analysis of the philosophers Anaximander, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Par-menides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Aspasia, Progatoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippocrates and Democritus can be found in my book, The Concept of Woman: The Aristotelian Revolution (750 B.C.-1250 A.D.) (Montreal: Eden Press, 1985), chap. 1Google Scholar

2 Plato was not completely consistent in his answers. On the cosmic level, when considering the relation of sex identity to the metaphysical concepts of form and matter he articulated a rationale for sex polarity. Ibid., chap. IB.

3 Republic, 454c-e.

4 De Generatione Animalium, 765b10-18.

5 For a detailed analysis of Aristotle's theory see my The Concept of Woman, chap. 2.

6 For a consideration of the theories of the philosophers Speussipus, Xenocrates, Peric-tione, Theano, Theophrastus, Epicurus, Chryssiups, Melissa, Aresas, Myia, Cicero, Lucretius, Philo, Seneca, Pliny the Elder, Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, Plutarch, Ju-venal, Marcus Aurelius, Galen, Plotinus and Porphyry, see ibid., chap. 3.

7 Augustine, , The City of God Against the Pagans (London: William Heinemann; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966), XIII, 19Google Scholar.

8 For a detailed analysis of Augustine's “three-tiered” theory of sex identity see my The Concept of Woman, chap. 3.

9 For a detailed analysis of Hildegard of Bingen's theory see ibid., chap. 4.

10 Hildegard of Bingen, Heilkunde (Causae et Curae) (Salzburg: O. Muller Verlag, 1972), 140Google Scholar.

11 For a detailed analysis of this institutionalization of Aristotelian thought see my The Concept of Woman, chap. 5.

12 Metaphysics, X, 9, 1058a29–31.

13 See Boccaccio, Giovanni, The Decameron (New York and Scarborough, ON: A Mentor Book, 1982)Google Scholar.

14 See Pizan, Christine de, The Book of the City of Ladies (New York: Persea, 1983); and Marguerite of Navarre,Google ScholarThe Heptameron (London: H. G. Bohn, 1855)Google Scholar.

15 Henrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, On the Superiority of Woman Over Man (New York: American News, 1873)Google Scholar.

16 Barre, Poullain de la, The Woman as Good as the Man or The Equality of Both Sexes, trans. A. L. (London: Roger L'Estrange, 1676)Google Scholar.

17 Stock, Marie Louise, Poullain de la Barre: A Seventeenth-Century Feminist (Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 1961)Google Scholar.